Salted_ A Manifesto on the World's Most Essential Mineral, With Recipes - Mark Bitterman [113]
Another benefit to the poultry plumpers is that, to the average consumer, their plumped poultry looks fatter, shinier, and generally more appealing. An artificially enhanced chicken breast holds the same appeal as any artificially enhanced breast: it is larger.
There is a third reason chicken producers turn to plumping: added salt means added flavor. The flavor of a chicken raised on an industrial scale is not always what one might hope for. Feeds, cages, drugs, and even the genetics of the animal itself are all engineered to convert a chick into the most profitable product possible as quickly and inexpensively as possible. The characteristics prized by industrial poultry raisers are breast size and the efficiency with which the bird converts feed into weight. Flavor is not paramount. But despite the harm done to the natural texture and concentration of flavors in chicken, plumped factory-farmed birds can pass for flavorful birds because of the tremendous amount of salt added to them.
Poultry isn’t the only plumped food. Seafood, especially scallops, is frequently plumped (that is, “soaked”) prior to selling to aid in visual appeal and moisture retention. Seafood brines are a solution of water and sodium tripolyphosphate (STPP). Although this concoction is not believed to be dangerous in the amounts contained in food, most governments regulate the amount of STPP that may be used to plump seafood because it substantially increases the weight, inflating the product’s price.
ROASTING
Heat cannot be separated from fire, or beauty from The Eternal —Dante Alighieri
Roasted food doesn’t want much—just a hot, quiet place to sit for an hour or so in privacy. Given that, a slab of beef or a chunked potato or a perfect pear will deliver delicious, concentrated flavor and the kind of gloriously deep lacquered tan that could turn a fussed-over pot roast pale with envy. Anything more is ornamentation. Except for the salt.
Roasts need salt to get their juices flowing. I know you’ve been told that salting meat before it goes in the oven dries it out and, if a piece of meat happened to be formed like a big water balloon, that would be the case. Salting the surface of a roast does indeed dry moisture from the surface, but no deeper, and for the ideal roast that’s exactly what you want. You need a dry surface to get deep browning. Browning doesn’t start until close to 300°F. Since water doesn’t evaporate until the thermometer hits 212°F, browning cannot occur where water is present; this is why a dry surface is synonymous with a fabulous crust. In addition, the evaporation of water from the surface helps to concentrate all of the flavors of the flesh inside.
All you need is a light dusting. Using a lot of salt before roasting provides no greater benefit to the cooking process. On the negative side, salt crystals—especially larger ones or an excess quantity—will often absorb some of the fat from the food along with water, and then as the temperature rises the fat will react with the hot salt, turning it into blackened, bitter granules. For that reason, in most of my roasting recipes, I salt a little before the food enters the oven and then salt to taste right before or after carving.
That said, different types of meat benefit from different types of roasting and, as a consequence, different salting techniques. For example, because pork has a tendency to dehydrate and toughen at high temperatures, it is better to roast it slowly. Adding salt early on further dehydrates the meat, and does nothing to add flavor that could not be gained by salting to finish. On the other hand, beef and lamb, which are most typically served rare to medium, are better off roasted at very high temperatures to achieve a rich, dark